Rory Bremner helps defeat plans to 'shoe horn' new house into green sliver in Chelsea

Impressionist Rory Bremner has helped to defeat plans to “shoe-horn” a two-bedroom house into a sliver of green space in Chelsea.

The developer was accused by locals of trying to squeeze the 1,000 sq ft house into the patch of land off the King’s Road.

But the star and his wife Tessa, a sculptor, joined residents opposing the plans for the property, which would have had one of its two storeys below ground.

Neighbours complained that tonnes of rubble would have to be removed through the site’s only access point — an alley between two houses less than a metre wide. One objector likened it to “gutting and renovating a house through a letter box”.

In a letter submitted to planning officials, Bremner, 52, wrote: “I’ve not known anything like it in the 14 years I’ve lived there. This is an inappropriate development, shoe-horned into an impractically small and hard-to-access site, with considerable noise, nuisance and disturbance to residents.”

In the letter, signed jointly with his wife, he said: “There are also great concerns about the upheaval, parking suspensions, construction traffic etc on a cul-de-sac used for access to the local school. All for a building which we now believe neither the applicant nor his family will live in. At the cost of a rare piece of green open space.”

Neighbours said the tiny plot, surrounded on all sides by some of the capital’s most prestigious and expensive town houses, was a haven for wildlife before trees were felled. It is now occupied by a shed.

After Kensington and Chelsea council decided to reject the application, Saul Greenberg, 72, who lives in a home overlooking the land, said: “It was beautiful before they cut all the trees down.”

Mandip Sahota, from agents Nicholas Tayor & Associates, for the developers Chrisfys Rossetti, said they had no comment to make about the decision.